Seedling Magazine

Caveman
by Laura Maria Grierson
Wait a minute
You’re telling me
You
Typing on a smartphone
made in China, capable
of linking to the entirety
of the human knowledge uploaded
to the web and shared between billions
of devices,
While sitting on a sofa
collected from Ikea/Argos/DFS
In a car that covered thirty miles in thirty minutes,
Bought from a job that has you
at a desk in a room for eight hours,
popping Paracetamol for a strained back,
So you can buy a 4K TV,
VR games, stuff for the kids
(as many as you want, because
you have contraception to limit them
and doctors with training gleaned
from thousands of years of trial
and error and passing down),
You, brown from a week in Tenerife,
across the North Atlantic Ocean at 35,000 feet,
Relaxed after purified water, chlorine­loaded pools,
man­made beaches, Instagram filters,
go­karting, streamed football matches,
deck chairs, balconies, air con,
waiters, boat rides, jet skis,
You
are telling me
that when you go to Iceland you
can’t pick up a vegan burger
because
cavemen ate meat?
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